


Nineteen

by noahfics



Category: Haikyuu!!
Genre: Birthday, Established Relationship, It's sweet, Kenma dowplays how much he loves his boyfriend, Kissing, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-17
Updated: 2016-11-17
Packaged: 2018-08-31 11:29:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,873
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8576767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noahfics/pseuds/noahfics
Summary: The cake is beautiful, definitely homemade, and Tetsurou can only begin to imagine the effort put into it.“You made me a cake?” he asks, quiet.“No.” Kenma can’t resist the opportunity. “I just felt like bringing it for the team and I wanted to show you for your opinion.” When Kuroo grins, Kenma does too, and they meet in the middle for a slow kiss.Or, the one where Kuroo turns 19 and Kenma is so in love it hurts.





	

Kenma enjoys plenty of things. He enjoys wispy clouds, warm apple pies, and cats. He likes the sun, likes green tea, likes the time just after he wakes up for school when the sky is dusky and the grass is dewy. He likes the absurd amount of pillows Tetsurou sleeps with (even more than that, he likes  _ falling asleep  _ on those pillows). He likes sleeping over Tetsu’s and having to use his deodorant or cologne in the mornings, likes the subtle smells he gets of his best friend during the day.

Kenma likes his PSP, long naps, and long weekends. Kenma likes long car rides, good books, and watercolor painting. Kenma, as it turns out,  _ really likes  _ his boyfriend. That’s no surprise.

He likes him so much, in fact, that he’ll do things he doesn’t particularly have fun doing if it makes Tetsu happy. He’ll do that any day, though it always has some limit. He’ll play volleyball, but he won’t get exhausted doing it. He’ll talk, go down to third gym alongside Tetsurou, but he’ll plug in his headphones when Bokuto yells one time too many.

That’s all gone out the window, because tomorrow is special. It’s not every day Tetsurou turns nineteen, and it’s not every day he bakes; he usually just buys store bought baked goods, but it’s  _ Kuroo’s birthday  _ and he only turns nineteen once, so Kenma has to make it special.

He’s already scraped two bowls of batter into the trash can, has already wasted too many ingredients, so he has to get it right the third time.

He cracks the eggs into one bowl, flour into another, and carefully spoons the baking powder into the flower (only after double, triple, and quadruple checking that it’s baking powder, not baking soda). He removes the eggshell from the second small bowl and separates out the egg whites, satisfied with how everything’s coming along.

He’s  _ so glad  _ they have an electric mixer, because beating air into the egg whites, trying to make a semi acceptable excuse for meringue is definitely something Kenma isn’t ready to do by hand. 

“Is this good?” he asks his mom when she enters the kitchen still in her work clothes. He displays the bowl of meringue (or, what will  _ eventually  _ be meringue) to her.

She purses her lips and shakes her head, returning the bowl to the stand. “Not quite,” she admits. “Try whipping it up for another minute or two - you need to be able to ice a cake with it, Kenma.”

He sighs, turns the mixer back on, and turns his attention back to the cake batter. It’s vanilla, just simple, but Kenma’s already redone it three times. He wouldn’t normally put quite this much effort into a cake, but it’s Kuroo’s, so.

He returns to the living room where his mother is tidying up, bowl tucked under his arm, and tentatively approaches her. She pauses when she sees him anyway, peers into the bowl when he holds it back up to her.

“That’s it,” she affirms. “You’ll have to puree and fold in the raspberry.”

Kenma’s about to tell her he’s got no idea how to  _ fold  _ something into meringue, that he thinks he can just do it in the mixer, but she says “gentle, with a spatula,” as if she can tell he’s unsure.

“Oh,” he says, heads back into the kitchen. 

He half wonders why he can’t blend the raspberries in the mixing bowl, but when he asks his mom, she says he definitely can’t do that and gets the food processor out of their cabinet, setting it down on the counter for her son.

“Fold,” she reminds him, exiting the kitchen after a moment, presumably to change out of her work clothes. Kenma’s sure he’s going to get it right this time, is going to do the icing well on the first try.

It doesn’t quite go to plan. When his mom asks if he washed the raspberries, he shakes his head, having completely missed that step.

He scrapes down the sides of the food processor, depositing the raspberry puree into the garbage can, alongside six eggshells and two attempts at batter, and resumes his quest at raspberry meringue.

This time, he washes the raspberries before depositing them in the food processor, and blends them down to an acceptable form (he double checks this with his mom when she comes back.)

All in all, he’s impressed it only took two tries; he folds the raspberry into the meringue, gathering that folding is more of a gentle movement, tucking the meringue  _ over  _ itself, as opposed to actually stirring it in.

“In the fridge,” his mom tells him, taking the bowl out of his hands and setting it on the bottom shelf. “Wait for your cake to cool completely before you ice it.” She raises one hand, tucking a strand of her son’s hair behind his ear, and smiles at him, wrinkles gathering in the corners of her eyes as she does.

He says “thanks, mom,” and nods, though he does shake his head and let the hair fall into place again. When she laughs, he isn’t quite sure why.

“It’s awful thoughtful of you, Kenma,” she says, smile returning, “to do this for Tetsurou.”

Kenma shrugs. “It’s not a big deal,” he says, voice small. He smiles ever so slightly when he recalls his birthday, only a month prior, when Kuroo had made him an apple pie. While Kenma required quite a lot of guidance with his baking attempts, Kuroo was actually quite skilled at baking, so Kenma was  _ sure  _ he did it himself, setting the bar high.

“You redid the batter three times.” She chuckles, one hand on her hip. “I don’t know the last time you cared that much about anything.”

Kenma can feel his cheeks heating up, just reiterates: “it isn’t a big deal.”

She shakes her head, but leaves the kitchen nonetheless. Moments later, the oven beeps, grabbing his attention, and he removes the cake, pleasantly surprised at how evenly it’s baked. Maybe, he thinks, Kuroo will be able to enjoy it after all.

The interim between cooling and icing (where Kenma remembers to refrigerate the cake) is filled with texts between Kenma and Tetsurou. Mostly, Kenma says that his mom offered to drive tomorrow, so they don’t have to take the train. 

Subsequently, this also means they’ll both get an extra fifteen minutes to sleep, and since Kenma will  _ never  _ pass up sleep, he jumps at the opportunity. 

He’ll bring the cake along with him too, store it in the club room, and show Kuroo before practice. 

He thinks, fleetingly, that he doesn’t know why he’s putting this much effort into one cake, into one birthday, but he recalls the past nine years of birthdays they’ve had to celebrate, and suddenly it doesn’t seem quite so insignificant.

Their first was the October that Kenma turned ten, when Kenma’s mom organized a party for him; Tetsurou had been the only one to show up, a bit awkward but with a present in hand and a crooked smile on his face. Kenma liked him just a little bit more after that.

Since then, much has changed; Kenma’s started playing volleyball, they’ve gone through most of their school years, and have started  _ dating.  _ (Kenma still can’t believe that’s real). It’s nice, makes Tetsu’s birthday feel that much more special.

Kenma’s favorite birthday, though, has to be the year that he turned sixteen. It hadn’t been a particularly good day to begin -- being on a Thursday meant that he’d have to go to school and that both of his parents would be at work, which wasn’t a big deal, except then he’d come down with a flu, and he’d fully expected to spend the day alone.

Except, that wasn’t quite how it had gone; instead, Kuroo had showed up at his front door with a yellow knitted blanket and a plastic container full of miso soup, and Kenma had smiled fondly and invited him in.

The transition from fifteen to sixteen was nice, he thinks, filled with steaming bowls of soup and of mugs of tea, filled with movies and with Kenma sniffling and running a fever but  _ so happy.  _ Kuroo had taken what was promised to be a miserable day and made it special; good, even. 

* * *

“ _ Nineteen _ ,” Kenma says when he’s laying in bed that night, phone pressed to his ear.

“Weird,” Tetsurou agrees. “Not as weird as eighteen is, but weird.”

Kenma stifles a yawn into his elbow, sits up in bed a bit straighter. “You get to sleep in,” he remarks. It’s only fifteen minutes, but it’s something, at least. “That’s your present,” he deadpans.

“I’d take an extra thirty seconds of sleep,” Tetsu admits, giving a breathy laugh. “Fifteen minutes is glorious. Tell your mom thanks, by the way.”

Kenma makes a small noise of acknowledgement; he likely won’t, because she’s already asleep in her own room, but it’s a nice thought, anyway.

Kuroo hums, a bit tired sounding and somewhere in the back of his throat, and Kenma’s half aware that he hears what must be a door opening on the other line.

“Eh- I have to go,” Tetsu tells him, breaking their comfortable silence. “My mom wants me to watch a movie with her.”

“Night, Kuro.”

Kenma’s asleep, practically, before his head hits the pillows.

* * *

Kenma’s approximately three seconds away from having a heart attack when he sees Tetsurou  _ in his kitchen _ . He doesn’t, not quite, but he does step back quickly and splash hot tea onto his hand, the skin pink and a bit raw.

“Ah-- ow,” he says with a grimace. “Hi, Kuro. Did my mom let you in?”

“She did,” Tetsu affirms. “Sorry to scare you like that.”

“Good birthday so far?” Kenma turns to face his friend, yawning. He’s already taken care of getting the cake in the car, out of Tetsurou’s view. 

“Mm,” Tetsu hums leaning against the doorframe. “Got to sleep in. That’s all I need.”

“Well, I already told you that’s your gift, so.”

Kenma leans against the adjacent counter, sips at his mug of tea; he doesn’t finish drinks, at least never without reheating it once or twice (sometimes, even three times), and since they have to go, he elects to dump the rest down the sink, turning to Tetsurou.

“Ready to go?”         

“Ready.”

The car ride is quiet; the grass shines with the dewfall from the night prior, and Kenma thinks the whole thing is rather idyllic, like they’re in a movie or  _ something _ . The back of the car is small, and they touch at  _ knees, thighs, elbows, shoulders  _ and Kenma’s breath catches in the back of his throat suddenly, and even though he’s been dating Kuroo for half a year, it still feels new and vibrant. He hopes that’s always the case.

The trees are lattice against the sky, still dusky and in shades of purple. Kenma remarks that even the sky got dressed up for the occasion, and the smile Tetsu gives him is enough to stop all the bad in the world, enough to stop all the rain and enough to make Kenma feel a content he’s never had before. They don’t talk, not because they don’t want to but because they don’t need to, and when they arrive, they go their separate ways, Tetsu to his first period class and Kenma to the club room.

Shibayama and Lev have assumed their usual spot, up in the corner. It seems that they’re trying to quickly copy off of homework, which isn’t an unusual sight to see, exactly. For the most part, though, everybody else has gone off to class, where Kenma probably  _ should  _ be heading.

He keeps the container with Tetsurou’s cake in it close, careful not to shift or slide it, and settles it on a shelf, having a near heart attack when he turns to see Lev behind him.

“Kenma-san!” he greets, so loud that the second year actually winces. “What do you have there?” His grin is far too bright for the early morning, already overwhelming Kenma slightly.

“Cake.” Kenma slips his backpack over his shoulder, heading out to his first period class. He can make out Lev saying something in response, but he’s already halfway out the door, so.

* * *

He catches up with Tetsurou four hours later, happening to catch his friend halfway between class and the clubroom.

“I’m not going if there’s some surprise party,” Kenma remarks, glancing up at his boyfriend.

“I’m sure there won’t be.”

“Lev had a  _ look  _ in his eye this morning.” Kenma can practically picture the first year stocking up on party poppers, getting their other teammates to pop them when Kuroo makes it to the clubroom. After all, he’s a captain, and it’s his last year before college, so they might be more inclined to make it special.

“I’ll go,” Kenma finally relents. “But if you know something I don’t, I’ll break up with you on spot.” He’s only teasing, but his serious expression doesn’t falter.

Tetsurou clutches at his chest, feigning hurt. “On my  _ birthday _ ? So harsh, Kenma.”

“That’s your other birthday gift,” Kenma says. “15 minutes of sleep and a breakup. Aren’t I thoughtful?”

The pair fall into step and approach the door to the club room, which Kenma can’t help but think is suspiciously quiet.

“I’ll let you go first,” he decides, stepping back. He can’t say he isn’t relieved when they’re met with an empty room, putting all his anxieties to rest.

“Wanna eat in here?”

“Sure.”

Tetsurou makes himself comfortable, pulling his bento from the bottom of his backpack. They face each other, and when Kuroo leans in for a kiss, Kenma’s more than happy to oblige. He’ll never tire of kissing Tetsurou, he doesn’t think. 

The club room is small, packed with everyone’s equipment, but he thinks that as long as he’s with Kuroo on his birthday, he doesn’t care  _ where  _ they spend it.

“I have a present for you at home,” Kenma says once he’s wrapped up his bento box. “And,” he continues, “I wanna grab something.”

Naturally, Tetsurou wonders exactly what the second year has up his sleeve, but he doesn’t wonder long, because Kenma sits beside him, knees touching, and tells him he can open his eyes.

The cake is  _ beautiful _ , definitely homemade, and Tetsurou can only begin to imagine the effort put into it.

“You made me a cake?” he asks, quiet.

“No.” Kenma can’t resist the opportunity. “I just felt like bringing it for the team and I wanted to show you for your opinion.” When Kuroo grins, Kenma does too, and they meet in the middle for a slow kiss.

“You must’ve spent a while on this cake,” Tetsurou observes.

Kenma lies, “not that long.” He knows he’s not telling the truth, and he thinks Kuroo knows, too. Neither say a thing.

Instead, Kenma takes a small stack of paper plates from his backpack, offering them to Kuroo.

“You get to cut it,” he says, mouth pulled into a tight line. His shaky hands definitely won’t fare well, and he spent too long on this cake to mess it up at the last minute.

They eat, and Kuroo tells him how good the cake is no less than six times (Kenma counted), and on the sixth, Kenma pulls his sweatshirt up to cover his face, blush creeping up his cheeks.

They don’t move from their spot; both mix their next classes, but Kenma doesn’t mind, and he doesn’t think Tetsurou does, either.

The period they miss is, in its entirety, one drawn out kiss. Kuroo always leans in and Kenma’s  _ there _ , meets him halfway. The second year rests a hand at Tetsurou’s hip bone and relaxes into his boyfriend’s chest, breaking away once more.

It’s definitely not the most romantic scene, nor is it anything special, really. The club room is crowded with bags and clothes and volleyball shoes, but Kenma thinks that he and Tetsurou could have spent the day sitting on the streets, and he still would have enjoyed it, so.

It’s even less romantic when the others begin to come in from their last classes (coincidentally, those same classes which the two elected not to attend), so they break the position they’ve been holding for the past few hours; Kuroo’s arm around Kenma, Kenma’s head on Kuroo’s shoulder, huddled together like their lives depended on it.

It’s only a matter of time before the others discover the cake, cutting into it after getting Tetsurou’s permission. The endless flood of compliments (“This is the  _ best _ , Kenma!”) have the second year eager to exit the suddenly crowded room, and he cocks his head towards the door, guiding Tetsurou along with him.

Once they’re out, trees swaying and sky blue, Kuroo teases “so, how many hours did you spend on that cake, Kenma? Actually.”

Kenma just says “shut  _ up, _ Kuro.” There’s no harshness to his words, though, as if there ever could be.

Tetsurou follows instructions easy, pulls Kenma into another slow kiss, which is definitely effective in silencing  _ both  _ of them. This, Tetsurou thinks, feeling Kenma lean into him, has to be his best birthday thus far.

**Author's Note:**

> HEY!! thank you sm for reading i appreciate it a lot <3333  
> comments and kudos give me life~  
> come say hey on [tumblr!!](http://www.kickthepjs.tumblr.com/about)


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